G Is For Grace, God & Go

"There but for the grace of God go I" 

This is a quote attributed to John Bradford (1510-1555), an evangelical preacher and prebendery of St. Paul's cathedral. Though there is no actual evidence to support this attribution I'm sticking with it because it's so fitting given that he is said to spoken these words whilst he was in prison.

The story goes that one day as he was looking out of a window in the Tower of London he saw another poor soul being lead to his execution and uttered this now immortal phrase which has subsequently been used and abused to the point that it has entered the common vernacular of many cultures and languages around the world.

F Is For Fellowship

I've always found fellowship to be a bit of an odd word, preferring instead to talk about friendship. However in church circles it doesn't always work.

Fellowship is about sharing similar interests, ideals, or experiences which is pretty much what we do when we're with fellow Christians.

E Is For Ecumenical

Ooh, that's a big word!

One of the joys we've had in our many years in mission and leadership is that we've never really behaved as we should have. I'm not saying we were naughty or doing things we shouldn't have but rather I'm referring to the fact that we've never really gone to the churches we were expected to.

D Is For Discipleship

One of my biggest passions is discipleship in the local church. In a secular sense we're talking about mentoring which basically means getting alongside folk and helping them to make positive choices in their lives and walking the walk with them through those choices. In the local church context it means doing just this but also helping them to know Jesus better by helping them grow in their faith and getting to know and understand the bible. 

C Is For Conference

Good Friday saw Tree of Life getting together with our family of Church of Love & Grace and Simon's Bay Christian Church for our first ever conference.

The theme was The Master's Plan which was highly appropriate for the Easter weekend.

I've never spoken at a conference before so was very excited by this opportunity but also a little nervous, especially about speaking in front of around 100 people.

B Is For Bible

I have to be honest and say I love this book!

The bible underpins our faith and is the building block for church life at Tree of Life.

This is our personal collection of bibles (there are a few missing scattered around the house and car) in the office just above my desk. We have goodness knows how many versions in at least 6 languages. Some are used a lot more than others, though increasingly I use e-Sword which is a brilliant bit of bible study software!

A To Z Challenge

I'm cheating today and using the A for 'A To Z'

Hopefully this will be the end of my cheating but I'll let you know if it isn't.

It Is Finished

Tetelestai, a simple ten letter word in Greek meaning: It is finished.

Book Week - Character Day

As part of International Book week my boys get to dress up as a favourite book character today.

Eli might not look too thrilled but he chose to go as Little Brown Mouse from The Gruffalo whilst Joel is truly thrilled to be going as Gollum from The hobbit.

So proud of their choices!

Truth

Truth is an interesting concept. In itself it's very simple but we like to complicate it, just look at how many theories of truth are out there and how many thousands of years they have been discussed. All this does is reduce truth to the point that society will tell us that there is no such thing as truth, saying 'one man's truth is another man's lie'. But in reality truth remains very simple.

Truth is defined as an accord with fact or reality, or fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal.

Truth is the opposite of falsehood and lies.

I recently sat with Joel and talked about one of my sporting heroes, Lance Armstrong and how his entire world of success, fame and celebrity was built on lies. Joel knows that as a keen cyclist I'm upset about the Armstrong story and he also knows there are two groups of people I hate in life: thieves and liars. I hope that using the story of Armstrong my boys will grow to respect truth and favour it.

Tree Of Life Turns One

On Sunday we celebrated Tree Of Life's first birthday with a celebration with our family from Church of Love & Grace and it was a blessing to have Shaddie & Lisa with us from Simon's Bay Christian Church.

It was a great time of worshiping together but it was also a humbling time for us as Dean was appointed as lead elder of the church.  We really feel humbled and privileged to be tasked with this role and we're very excited about where God is leading us and what he is doing.